Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated), page 402
A grotesque figure emerged from the dusk. It was a tall fellow, who seemed to have been broken in the middle, for he walked almost doubled up. His face, seen in the half-light, was that of a man of thirty or so, with a full black beard and red protuberant lips. His clothes were ruinous, an old leather jerkin which gaped at every seam, ragged small-clothes of frieze, and for hosen a wrapping of dirty clouts. There were no shoes on his feet, and his unwashed face was dark as a berry. In his hand he had a long ash pole, and on his head a blue cowl so tight that it was almost a skull-cap.
David recognized the figure for Daft Gibbie, the village natural, who had greeted him with mewing and shouting at his ordination. In the clachan street he had seemed an ordinary deformed idiot — what was known locally as an “object” — but up on this twilight hilltop he was like an uncouth revenant from an older world. The minister instinctively gripped his staff tighter, but Gibbie’s intention was of the friendliest.
“A braw guid e’en to ye, Mr. Sempill, sir. I saw ye tak’ the hill and I bode to follow, for I was wantin’ to bid ye welcome to Woodilee. Man, ye gang up the brae-face like a maukin [a hare]. Ower fast, I says to mysel’, ower fast for a man o’ God, for what saith the Word, ‘He that believeth shall not make haste!’”
The creature spoke in a voice of great beauty and softness — the voice rather of a woman than of a man. And as he spoke he bowed, and patted the minister’s arm, and peered into his face with bright wild eyes. Then he clutched David and forced him round till again he was looking over the Wood.
“The Hill o’ Deer’s a grand bit for a prospect, sir, for is it no like the Hill o’ Pisgah from which ye can spy the Promised Land? Ye can lift up your eyes to the hills, and ye can feast them on the bonny haughs o’ the Aller, or on the douce wee clachan o’ Woodilee, wi’ the cots sittin’ as canty round the kirk as kittlins round an auld cat.”
“I was looking at the Wood,” said David.
The man laughed shrilly. “And a braw sicht it is in the gloamin’ frae the Hill o’ Deer. For ye can see the size o’ the muckle spider’s wab, but doun in the glen ye’re that clamjamphried wi’ michty trees that your heid spins like a peery and your e’en are dozened. It’s a unco thing the Wud, Mr. Sempill, sir?”
“Do you know your ways in it, Gibbie?”
“Me! I daurna enter it. I keep the road, for I’m feared o’ yon dark howes.” Then he laughed again, and put his mouth close to the minister’s ear. “Not but what I’ll tak’ the Wud at the proper season. Tak’ the Wud, Mr. Sempill, like other folk in Woodilee.”
He peered in the minister’s face to see if he were understood. Satisfied that he was not, he laughed again.
“Tak’ Gibbie’s advice, sir, and no gang near the Wud. It’s nae place for men o’ God, like yoursel’, sir, and puir Gibbie.”
“Do they call it the Black Wood?”
Gibbie spat. “Incomin’ bodies, nae doot,” he said in contempt. “But it’s just the Wud wi’ nae ‘black’ aboot it. But ken ye the name that auld folk gie’d it?” He became confidential again. “They ca’d it Melanudrigill,” he whispered.
David repeated the word. His mind had been running on heathen learning, and he wondered if the name were Greek.
“That might mean the ‘place of dark waters,’” he said.
“Na, na. Ye’re wrong there, Mr. Sempill. There’s nae dark waters in Melanudrigill. There’s the seven burns that rin south, but they’re a’ as clear as Aller. But dinna speak that name to ither folk, Mr. Sempill, and dinna let on that Gibbie telled ye. It’s a wanchancy name. Ye can cry it in a safe bit like the Hill o’ Deer, but if ye was to breathe it in the Wud unco things micht happen. I daurna speak my ain name among the trees.”
“Your name is Gibbie. Gibbie what?”
The man’s face seemed to narrow in fear and then to expand in confidence. “I can tell it to a minister o’ the Word. It’s Gilbert Niven. Ken ye where I got that name? In the Wud, sir. Ken ye wha gie’d it me? The Guid Folk. Ye’ll no let on that I telled ye.”
The night was now fallen, and David turned for home, after one last look at the pit of blackness beneath him. The idiot hobbled beside him, covering the ground at a pace which tried even his young legs, and as he went he babbled.
“Tak’ Gibbie’s advice and keep far frae the Wud, Mr. Sempill, and if ye’re for Roodfoot or Calidon haud by the guid road. I’ve heard tell that in the auld days, when there was monks at the kirkton, they bode to gang out every year wi’ bells and candles and bless the road to keep it free o’ bogles. But they never ventured into the Wud, honest men. I’ll no say but what a minister is mair powerfu’ than a monk, but an eident body will run nae risks. Keep to fine caller bits like this Hill o’ Deer, and if ye want to traivel, gang west by Chasehope or east by Kirk Aller. There’s nocht for a man o’ God in the Wud.”
“Are there none of my folk there?”
For a second Gibbie stopped as if thunderstruck. “Your folk!” he cried. “In the Wud!” Then he perceived David’s meaning. “Na, na. There’s nae dwallin’ there. Nether Fennan is no far off and Reiverslaw is a bowshot from the trees, but to bide in the Wud! — Na, na, a man would be sair left to himsel’ ere he ventured that! There’s nae hoose biggit [built] by human hand that wadna be clawed doun by bogles afore the wa’ rase a span frae the grund.”
At the outfield of Mirehope Gibbie fled abruptly, chanting like a night bird.
CHAPTER II. THE ROAD TO CALIDON
The minister sat at his supper of porridge and buttermilk when Isobel broke in on him, her apple-hued face solemn and tearful.
“There’s ill news frae up the water, Mr. Sempill. It’s Marion Simpson, her that’s wife to Richie Smail, the herd o’ the Greenshiel. Marion, puir body, has been ill wi’ a wastin’ the past twalmonth, and now it seems she’s near her release. Johnnie Dow, the packman, is ben the house, and he has brocht word that Richie is fair dementit, and that the wife is no like to last the nicht, and would the minister come up to the Greenshiel. They’ve nae bairns, the Lord be thankit; but Richie and Marion have aye been fell fond o’ ither, and Richie’s an auld exercised Christian and has been many times spoken o’ for the eldership. I doot ye’ll hae to tak’ the road, sir.”
It was his first call to pastoral duty, and, though he had hoped to be at his books by candle-light, David responded gladly. He put his legs into boots, saddled his grey cob, flung his plaid round his shoulders, and in ten minutes was ready to start. Isobel watched him like a mother.
“I’ll hae a cup o’ burned yill [ale] waitin’ for ye to fend off the cauld — no but what it’s a fine lown [mild] nicht. Ye ken the road, sir? Up by Mirehope and round by the back o’ the Hill.”
“There’s a quicker way by Roodfoot, and on this errand there’s no time to lose.”
“But that’s through the Wud,” Isobel gasped. “It’s no me that would go through the Wud in the dark, nor naebody in Woodilee. But a minister is different, nae doot.”
“The road is plain?” he asked.
“Aye, it’s plain eneuch. There’s naething wrong wi’ the road. But it’s an eerie bit when the sun’s no shinin’. But gang your ways, sir, for a man o’ God is no like common folk. Ye’ll get a mune to licht ye back.”
David rode out of the kirkton, and past the saughs and elders which marked the farm of Crossbasket, till the path dipped into the glen of the Woodilee burn and the trees began. Before he knew he was among them, old gnarled firs standing sparsely among bracken. They were thin along the roadside, but on the hill to his right and down in the burn’s hollow they made a cloud of darkness. The August night still had a faint reflected light, and the track, much ribbed by tree roots, showed white before him. The burn, small with the summer drought, made a far-away tinkling, the sweet scents of pine and fern were about him, the dense boskage where it met the sky had in the dark a sharp marmoreal outline. The world was fragrant and quiet; if this be the Black Wood, thought David, I have been in less happy places.
But suddenly at a turn of the hill the trees closed in. It was almost as if he had stripped and dived into a stagnant pool. The road now seemed to have no purpose of its own, but ran on sufferance, slinking furtively as the Wood gave it leave, with many meaningless twists, as if unseen hands had warded it off. His horse, which had gone easily enough so far, now needed his heel in its side and many an application of his staff. It shied at nothing visible, jibbed, reared, breathing all the while as if its wind were touched. Something cold seemed to have descended on David’s spirits, which, as soon as he was aware of it, he tried to exorcise by whistling a bar or two, and then by speaking aloud. He recited a psalm, but his voice, for usual notably full and mellow, seemed not to carry a yard. It was forced back on him by the trees. He tried to shout, with no better effect. There came an echo which surprised him, till he perceived that it was an owl. Others answered, and the place was filled with their eldritch cries. One flapped across the road not a yard from him, and in a second his beast was on its haunches.
He was now beyond the throat of the glen, and the Woodilee burn had left him, going its own way into the deeps of Fennan Moss, where the wood was thin. The road plucked up courage, and for a little ran broad and straight through a covert of birches. Then the pines closed down again, this time with more insistence, so that the path was a mere ladder among gnarled roots. Here there were moths about — a queer thing, David thought — white glimmering creatures that brushed his face and made his horse half crazy. He had ridden at a slow jog, but the beast’s neck and flanks were damp with sweat. Presently he had to dismount and lead it, testing every step with his foot, for there seemed to be ugly scaurs breaking away on his left. The owls kept up a continuous calling, and there was another bird with a note like a rusty saw. He tried to whistle, to shout, to laugh, but his voice seemed to come out of folds of cloth. He thought it was his plaid, but the plaid was about his chest and shoulders and far from his mouth. . . . And then, at one step the Wood ceased and he was among meadows.
He knew the place, for after the darkness of the trees the land, though the moon had not risen, seemed almost light. There in front was the vale down which Aller flowed, and on the right was his own familiar glen of Rood. Now he could laugh at his oppression — now that he was among the pleasant fields where he had played as a boy. . . . Why had he forgotten about the Black Wood, for it had no part in his memories? True, he had come always to Roodfoot by the other road behind the Hill of Deer, but there were the dark pines not a mile off — he must have adventured many times within their fringes. He thought that it was because a child is shielded by innocence from ugliness. . . . And yet, even then, he had had many nightmares and fled from many bogles. But not from the Wood. . . . No doubt it was the growing corruption of a man’s heart.
The mill at Roodfoot stood gaunt and tenantless, passing swiftly into decay. He could see that the mill-wheel had gone, and its supports stood up like broken teeth; the lade was choked with rushes; the line of a hill showed through the broken rigging. He had known of this, but none the less the sight gave him a pang, for David was a jealous conserver of his past. . . . But as the path turned up the glen beside the brawling Rood, he had a sudden uplifting of spirit. This could not change, this secret valley, whose every corner he had quartered, whose every nook was the home of a delightful memory. He felt again the old ardour, when, released from Edinburgh, he had first revisited his haunts, tearful with excited joy. The Wood was on him again, but a different wood, his own wood. The hazels snuggled close to the roadside, and the feathery birches and rowans made a canopy, not a shadow. The oaks were ancient friends, the alders old playmates. His horse had recovered its sanity, and David rode through the dew-drenched night in a happy rapture of remembrance.
He was riding up Rood — that had always been the thing he had hoped to do. He had never been even so far as Calidon before, for a boy’s day’s march is short. But he had promised himself that some day when he was a man he would have a horse, and ride to the utmost springs — to Roodhope-foot, to the crinkle in Moss Fell where Rood was born. . . . “Up the water” had always been like a spell in his ear. He remembered lying in bed at night and hearing a clamour at the mill door: it was men from up the water, drovers from Moffat, herds from the back of beyond, once a party of soldiers from the south. And up the water lay Calidon, that ancient castle. The Hawkshaws were a name in a dozen ballads, and the tales of them in every old wife’s mouth. Once they had captained all the glens of Rood and Aller in raids to the Border, and when Musgrave and Salkeld had led a return foray, it was the Hawkshaws that smote them mightily in the passes. He had never seen one of the race; the men were always at the wars or at the King’s court; but they had filled his dreams. One fancy especially was of a little girl — a figure with gold hair like King Malcolm’s daughter in the “Red Etin of Ireland” tale — whom he rescued from some dire peril, winning the thanks of her tall mail-clad kin. In that dream he too had been mail-clad, and he laughed at the remembrance. It was a far cry from that to the sedate minister of Woodilee.
As he turned up the road to the Greenshiel he remembered with compunction his errand. He had been amusing himself with vain memories when he was on the way to comfort a bed of death. Both horse and rider were in a sober mood when they reached the sheiling, the horse from much stumbling in peat-bogs, and the man from reflections on his unworthiness.
Rushlights burned in the single room, and the door and the one window stood open. It was a miserable hut of unmortared stones from the hill, the gaps stuffed with earth and turf, and the roof of heather thatch. One glance showed him that he was too late. A man sat on a stool by the dead peat-fire with his head in his hands. A woman was moving beside the box bed and unfolding a piece of coarse linen. The shepherd of the Greenshiel might be an old exercised Christian, but there were things in that place which had no warrant from the Bible. A platter full of coarse salt lay at the foot of the bed, and at the top crossed twigs of ash.
The woman — she was a neighbouring shepherd’s wife — stilled her keening at the sound of David’s feet.
“It’s himsel’,” she cried. “Richie, it’s the minister. Wae’s me, sir, but ye’re ower late to speed puir Mirren. An hour syne she gaed to her reward — just slipped awa’ in a fit o’ hoastin’ [coughing]. I’ve strauchten’d the corp and am gettin’ the deid claes ready — Mirren was aye prood o’ hers, and keepit them fine and caller wi’ gall and rosmry. Come forrit, sir, and tak’ a look on her that’s gane. There was nae deid-thraws wi’ Mirren, and she’s lyin’ as peacefu’ as a bairn. Her face is sair faun in, but I mind when it was the bonniest face in a’ Rood water.”
The dead woman lay with cheeks like wax, a coin on each eye, so that for the moment her face had the look of a skull. Disease had sculptured it to an extreme fineness, and the nose, the jaw, and the lines of the forehead seemed chiselled out of ivory. David had rarely looked on death, and the sight gave him a sense first of repulsion and then of an intolerable pathos. He scarcely heard the clatter of the shepherd’s wife.
“She’s been deein’ this mony a day, and now she’s gane joyfully to meet her Lord. Eh, but she was blithe to gang in the hinner end. There was a time when she was sweir to leave Richie. ‘Elspet,’ she says to me, ‘what will that puir man o’ mine dae his lee lane?’ and I aye says to her, ‘Mirren, my wumman, the Lord’s a grand provider, and Richie will haud fast by Him. Are not twa sparrows,’ I says—”
David went over to the husband on the creepie by the fireside, and laid his hand on his shoulder. The man sat hunched in a stupor of misery.
“Richie,” he said, “if I’m too late to pray with Marion, I can pray with you.”
He prayed, as he always prayed, not in a mosaic of Scripture texts, but in simple words; and as he spoke he felt the man’s shoulder under his hand shake as with a sob. He prayed with a sincere emotion, for he had been riding through a living, coloured world, and now felt like an icy blast the chill and pallor of death. Also he felt the pity of this lifelong companionship broken, and the old man left solitary. When he had finished, Richie lifted his face from his hands, and into his eyes, which had been blank as a wall, came the wholesome dimness of tears.
“I’m no repinin’,” he said. “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, and I bless His name. What saith the Apostle — Mirren has gane to be with Christ, whilk is far better. There was mony a time when the meal-ark was toom [empty], and the wind and weet cam’ in through the baulks, and the peats wadna kindle, and we were baith hungry and cauld. But Mirren’s bye wi’ a’ that, for she’s bielded in the everlasting arms, and she’s suppin’ rich at the Lord’s ain table. But eh, sir, I could wish it had been His will to hae ta’en me wi’ her. I’m an auld man, and there’s nae weans [children], and for the rest o’ my days I’ll be like a beast in an unco loan [strange lane]. God send they binna mony.”
“The purposes of the Lord are true and altogether righteous. If He spares you, Richie, it’s because He has still work for you to do on this earth.”
“I kenna what it can be. My fit’s beginnin’ to lag on the hill, and ony way I’m guid for nocht but sheep. Lambin’s and clippin’s and spainin’s [weanings] is ower puir a wark for the Lord to fash wi’.”
“Whatever you put your hand to is the work of the Lord, if you keep His fear before you.”
“Maybe, sir.” The man rose from his stool and revealed a huge gaunt frame, much bowed at the shoulders. He peered in the rushlight at the minister’s face.
“Ye’re a young callant to be a minister. I was strong on your side, sir, when ye got the call, for your preachin’ was like a rushin’ michty wind. I mind I repeated the heids o’ your sermon to Mirren. . . . Ye’ve done me guid, sir — I think it’s maybe the young voice o’ ye. Ye wad get the word from Johnnie Dow. Man, it was kind to mak’ siccan haste. I wish — I wish ye had seen Mirren in life. . . . Pit up anither petition afore ye gang — for a blessin’ on this stricken house and on an auld man who has his title sure in Christ, but has an unco rebellious heart.”
